Election Observers Question IEC’s Data Entry System

Institutions overseeing the election process on Saturday criticized the Independent Election Commission (IEC) over failure to finalize the list of registered voters for the upcoming parliamentary and district council elections.

Transparent Election Foundation of Afghanistan (TEFA) said that the IEC’s data center cannot identify frauds in the voter registration process, criticizing the commission over slow progress in finalizing the list of registered voters for the elections.

“Preparations from a technical perspective would be a major challenge in front of the elections and the database which has been created by the election commission can’t find out and identify the frauds being occurred during voter registration process,” said Naeem Ayoubzada, Head of TEFA.

Hafizullah Hashimi, a commissioner of IEC, however, said that the database can detect the fake stickers being attached with voters’ national ID card.

“The data entry system has been organized to detect fraud in stickers, not in Tazkeras [national ID cards],” he said. “We do not hold responsibility for Tazkera.”

Lack of a security plan was the other issue as TEFA spotting it out as a concern.

“A security plan for election day has not been made yet as it should be in priority,” Ayoubzada said. “It will be difficult to see people participating in the elections if the security of voters, candidates, and employees of IEC have not been maintained.”

Following the matter, the Interior Ministry said that they have a security plan which covers the voter registration process and Election Day.

“Work has been done on the security plan, and it has been prepared. All the steps which have been passed so far were according to the security plan,” the ministry’s spokesman Najib Danish said.